MARLBORO — An absurdist tour de force exploring how we communicate with technological anxieties in a digital age is coming to Marlboro College on Friday, Feb. 7.
The new comedy, Instant Misunderstanding, from Goat in the Road Productions (GRP), will be performed by GRP's two co-founders and artistic directors, Will Bowling and Chris Kaminstein.
“In Instant Misunderstanding, past and present collide in a whirlwind of sandwiches, phone conferences, tea, and computer commands,” Kaminstein says.
Bowling and Kaminstein created their newest work along with Northeast Kingdom native and collaborator Sascha Stanton-Craven, whose credits include writer/editor at The Onion and Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. The production is directed by Andrew Vaught.
Alison Fensterstock wrote in The Times-Picayune that the play is filled with “rapid-fire comic dialogue, song, dance, gesture, wrestling, funny accents and cleverly crafted wordplay.”
Absurdist theater is, according to the American Heritage dictionary, a “form of drama that emphasizes the absurdity of human existence by employing disjointed, repetitious, and meaningless dialogue, purposeless and confusing situations, and plots that lack realistic or logical development.”
But don't think that absurdist theater is analogous to improv. GRP's pieces are meticulously researched and ensemble-created, and they usually contain an element of whimsy to leaven the mix.
Instant Misunderstanding is comedy that “explores the way technology can change the political landscape, in specific how political speech gets transmitted through technology,” Kaminstein says. “Will and I believe that very anxiety is what produces those advancements.”
Kaminstein is an actor, director, and arts instructor who joined with Bowling to start Goat in the Road Productions after moving to New Orleans in 2008. He has had a hand in creating and performing most of GRP's original work, often with Bowling, a writer, performer, musician, and scholar who came to New Orleans after working in the New York City theater scene.
GPR has presented works at the State of the Nation Festival, the New Orleans Fringe Festival, and Berkshire Fringe Festival, and the theater has received funding from the National Performance Network in 2010 and 2011 for its ongoing collaboration with Guatemalan-based theater company Artzenico.
Last year, Kaminstein and Bowling appeared on the cover of American Theater magazine, which contained an article about GRP's ensemble practices.
GRP's mission also includes an educational component, something it takes very seriously.
Since 2009, it has been presenting Play/Write, a children's playwriting program with two parts: a teaching residency and a showcase of student work.
Over the course of 11 weeks, GRP artists teach playwriting to students in grades 5 through 7 who finish the class by writing their own plays. GRP publishes each play, and 10 plays are chosen to be produced and presented by local professional theater companies.
Third in a series
Goat in the Road Productions has presented eight original performance works and two original gallery installations. Instant Misunderstanding is the third play of a political trilogy by Bowling and Kaminstein.
The first work of the triptych, Whatever Just Happened, Didn't Happen (2008), is a 20-minute piece about two men tasked with the job of shuffling papers related to the “Starr Report” - Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of former U.S. President Bill Clinton - as they attempt to get to the bottom of an irreversible action.
The second, Our Man (2009), is an hour-long comedy in which two men in a box decide to elect as their president a tennis racquet named Ronald Reagan.
Kaminstein and Bowling play the same characters in all three plays.
“They are sort of everyman clowns, rather like the characters you might find in a play like [Samuel] Beckett's Waiting for Godot,” says Kaminstein. “These two consistent characters help tie the three plays together into a trilogy.”
The playwrights are interested in the way technology has changed the political landscape, specifically in the ways political speech gets transmitted through technology.
“In our trilogy, we explore the general feeling that the reality of the political landscape today puts a mythical gloss on everything,” Kaminstein says, “and we also look at how technological advancements are moving so rapidly that it is is difficult to make political decisions.”
Kaminstein does not think they push a specific political agenda in their work.
“We certainly never start out that way,” he says. “We never begin a piece with something to proclaim. If we did that, we would lose the discovery in the creation of a work.”
Perhaps this goal of discovery has led people to tell them that their plays often feel as if they are improvised.
“They are not,” says Kaminstein. “We do, however, use improvisation as a tool in development of our plays.”
First, the movement
In creating a new work, Kaminstein and Bowling do not begin with a thesis or even any words, but with pure abstract movement.
“Before we even have any idea what our work may be about, before we know the text, we begin exploring certain stage movements,” says Kaminstein. “These movements that may seem somewhat random give us a bank of possibilities to work with. They make what we do become unusual, unexpected, odd and funny, and take us away from rigid naturalism in our staging.
“I do not want to give the impression that we are creating dance pieces here. Our plays are not dances, but they are stage pieces concerned with the way movement and text collide.”
Despite the weight of the language about his theatrical philosophy, Kaminstein stresses an important point: that “our works may address serious ideas, but they are also fun.”
“I would characterize what you will find at Goat in the Road Productions is a total package of seriousness backed up with silliness, that is expressed via singing, moment, and text,” he adds.
Instant Misunderstanding is appropriate for all audiences.
“The work is fine for kids to see, I guess,” says Kaminstein. “I mean, there may be a curse word here and there, but nothing really offensive. Yet given the nature of the subject, I do not know if the play would be all that interesting to young children.”
“Then again, kids always get a kick out of seeing two silly guys onstage,” he adds.
“When we were doing Instant Misunderstanding at North American Cultural Laboratory in Highland Lake, N.Y., a four-year-old child of one of the stagehands sat watching Will and me rehearse,” Kaminstein says. “Afterwards, he came up to us and said in a dry sophisticated voice, 'Good work, guys. I love what you are doing here.'”
Everyone's a critic.